Every year, a considerable amount of flexible packaging barrier film is being disposed by landfill or incineration, due to the difficulty of dispersing typical functional barrier polymers such as Ethylene vinyl alcohol (EVOH) or Polyamide (PA) within a more conventional Polyolefin (PO) waste stream for further recycling.
Typically, flexible film converters and recyclers get value out of post industrial waste by submitting the material to a compatibility process, in which a recycling compatibilizer is added to the waste stream for further conversion of the material into pellets, allowing its reuse. However, when a post consumer barrier film structure is collected and mixed with a conventional PO waste stream it is very difficult to know when to use such compatibilizers and the amounts required.
An all-PO film structure can facilitate the recycling of waste by using only this family of raw material in its structure, therefore avoiding the compatibilizer step, however, when gas barrier is required the package will be compromised. Therefore, a solution is desired to allow the incorporation of a gas barrier material in a film structure while still allowing for recycling without the need of a secondary process.